Brother-in-Arms
by trufflemores
Summary: 3.15 speculation fic. A mind-controlled Wally goes after Barry and does damage.


"Hey, hey, _Flash_ , listen to me—"

" _Stay away from me._ " Wally stands at the end of the street, red lightning crackling around him. With startling abruptness, it switches purple, dangerous and diffuse.

 _Oh, that's new_.

Barry steps closer. There's a repulsive quality to Wally's lightning, a stay-the-hell-away-from-me snarl on his face. "Kid, you don't wanna hurt anyone," Barry says, lifting his hands in a placating gesture. "C'mon. It's me." _It's Barry._

He can't unmask – they're in too public a space, and even at night, a dark street is still dangerously out-in-the-open – but he dares to step closer. Wally _growls_.

" _Get away from me,_ " Wally seethes, final-warning.

Barry steps closer and Wally vanishes.

For a moment, Barry wants to ask, _Guys, which way did he go?_

Then Barry sees the faintest outline of a human being and realizes _Wally's still there_ , barely tangible but fully present. Almost translucent in the night, less human than Speed. He sees the shadow fly towards him, like a shark in the water, too fast to stop.

 _Wally,_ he thinks, and then the freight train plows into him and throws him off his feet. He hits a building so hard he breaks through a concrete wall, landing in a vacant office with a breathless grunt.

Wally gives chase, still disarmingly intangible. Barry takes off, reeling from the first impact. Cisco's commentary in the comms is meaningless to him, his focus arrested by the speedster on his tail. He doesn't dare look, can't take a second to chance a glance over his shoulder.

He knows he's too Speed-saturated to hide, like a flare in the dark. Unlike Wally, he can't just unbuckle the parachute of Speed Force and plunge to the Earth, hoping he'll learn to fly before he hits the ground: he's trapped with it, or maybe it's trapped with him, but either way it is here and here to stay and dammit, dammit, dammit.

 _He's too fast._

He can feel it, the closing distance between them. They leave the city, sprinting pell-mell towards the end of the horizon. He has no idea where they are, but at the end of the continent he hesitates. He knows he can run on water, but it's an _ocean_ , a darkness that stretches relentlessly to the edge of the Earth. _I can run across water,_ he knows, but his heels dig in, and that's when Wally closes.

The ghostly speedster tackles him, sending them both tumbling out across the water. For a second, Barry feels Wally push off him, using him as a stepping stone to recover his footing. Physics forces Barry to keep rolling until a wave finally catches him, plunging headfirst underwater.

Bobbing to the surface, he snatches a deep breath before ducking below, the glowing apparition in the distance turning its head to regard him just before he sinks. Under the surface it's dark, and very quiet, and his ears are ringing, but there's a wall of water standing between him and Wally. Even with his Speed signature written in neon colors, he's harder to see down here.

He swims fast and slows the rest of the world down, the burning need for air in his lungs decreasing as Speed halts his respirations to a count of ten per minute, six, three, two, one. Above the surface, he wouldn't feel it at all, cocooned safely in Speed. Down here, he still sees black spots, a reminder that this isn't how Speed is meant to work.

When his lungs are ready to burst, he angles sharply upward and breaks the surface, gasping for air. A lightning bolt runs circles in the distance, searching for him. He ducks under and kicks to shore, hauling himself onto land. Wally, scarcely visible, wheels towards him and charges. Barry takes off, still aching for a deep breath, and flies towards Central City.

 _Jesse_ , he thinks, but he has no way to contact her. Water shorts out the suits comms, a flaw Cisco hasn't been able to engineer around. He's on his own.

He skids to a halt once he hits city limits, hunching over his knees and gasping for breath. Wally freezes at the opposite end of the street, back to him, and Barry aches for a tranquilizing dart to shoot him with. If Zoom had had a similar moment of vulnerability during their first encounter, Barry might have saved himself and his family a lot of pain. But Wally turns around and the moment passes, and Barry cannot run any move, so he ducks, thwarting a knockout blow.

They're across the street, up the side of a building, chasing each other through floors. Wally becomes more tangible, and he senses it, too, aggravation giving him a burst of speed.

It's all he needs to knock Barry off his feet. Barry grunts and tries to recover, but there's a yellow blur moving towards him, and all he can do is twist futilely out of reach as a jagged piece of metal plunges deep into his shoulder.

His vision whites out, body lurching spasmodically in response, a strangled yell rising unbidden from his chest. Wally leans his weight on the blade and Barry's survival instinct overrides his panic and pain, using his legs to kick Wally off him, hard enough to throw him back, and lurch to his feet.

He can feel the blood pooling hotly around his shoulder, breaths hitching in his chest. Wally gets back on his feet, and he's almost opaque, his vibrations slowing to scarcely perceptible Speed-shivers. He blinks and then lurches, twisting around to see – _Jesse._

Barry's relief is palpable, his body limping numbly towards Wally. With obvious effort, Wally folds to his knees. He tries to speak, his gaze locked momentarily on Barry's, and the rage is so deep it pulls him like a puppet back to his feet.

Jesse hits him with a second tranq dart and his eyes roll back into his head, collapsing on the street with a final _thump._

"Jesse," Barry breathes, crouching beside Wally, reaching with numb, fumbling fingers for a pulse, exhaling when he finds it. "What'd you…?" He trails off, darkness and silence closing in on him. He lets Wally go and struggles to his own feet, watching as Jesse somberly picks up Wally. She's talking, and he knows the team must be trying to contact him, too, but his comms are dead, his ears are ringing, and his shoulder is screaming. He can't hear any of them.

Jesse Flashes back to STAR with Wally in tow; Barry straggles. A frozen bystander stares at him. "Flash?" they say, and it's his cue. He takes off, but the drag on his shoulder pulls him to a screeching halt seconds later, wheezing for breath. Fuck, _fuck_ , this is bad.

Then Jesse's there and he groans when she reaches for the embedded metal, fire surging down his arm when she touches it. She figures it out on her own – if she takes it out, he'll bleed to death before they even reach STAR – so she hitches his arm over her shoulders and takes off.

The world fades out of focus for a time. He is vaguely aware of his own body collapsing over a table at STAR, his frantic, asthmatic breaths and shaking, shell-shocked limbs ignoring any higher commands. He tries to contribute, to cooperate when he can, but there's a disconnect between what his mind is saying and what his body is doing.

Someone touches the metal still locked in bone and muscle and sinew and he yells, twisting and trying to get away. Three sets of hands pin him down, and try though he might, he doesn't stand a chance against their collective efforts, not when all his attention is focused debilitatingly on the injury. The hand lets go of the metal and he feels a warm hand sneak into his own, holding it tight.

 _Cisco_. He tries to squeeze it back but he ends up clamping down as pain frissons unexpectedly across his shoulder. A deep-seated groan breaks out of his chest, his breathing still desperate, the blood in his shoulder pooling hotly around it. _Please_ , he entreats, crushing Cisco's fingers a little. _Please._

He doesn't know what he's asking – Cisco fixes suits, not speedsters – but the warm pressure of Cisco's hand in his own is comforting. Someone gets a roll of gaze between his teeth and he whimpers, knowing what's coming and resisting, a primal level of pain triggering an equally primal response. _No, no, no, no—_

"It's okay," Cisco tells Barry, which is the only warning he gets before Jesse – he can feel her, even though his eyes refuse to open, like his mind doesn't want to see – takes hold of the bar and _yanks_.

Even in Speed-time, it's excruciatingly slow.

He feels metal part with bone, metal drag through skin. Jesse rips it out in one smooth motion. There's a starburst of pain that accompanies its departure – alcohol; even he isn't immune to fatal infections – and then there's a thick wad of cloths pressed against it.

His teeth ache from how hard he bites down on the gauze. His fingers are so numb they don't even twitch in Cisco's grip. Cisco squeezes hard sympathetically. _I know._ _I know._ _I'm sorry._

 _Cisco …_

The suit is in the way, but he finds reserves of energy to resist when they try to move it because he knows, he _knows_ what's coming. He flinches when Caitlin unzips it, grateful they never went for an over-the-head model – it would be impossible to get it off, and cutting through the reinforced tripolymer is a steeper order than standard-issue scissors can accommodate, requiring jaws-of-life level pliers. Thanks to its design, with eerily minimal resistance, the upper half of the suit peels away. He can feel the blood crusted around his shoulder and hears a deep exhalation that sounds like, _Mate._

A needle knits through his skin and he jerks, necessitating two sets of additional hands holding him down, Cisco's in his own like a vice as he keeps his other pinned to Barry's shoulder. Rationality unravels as the pain avoidance animal inside him seizes control. He doesn't know what he says to them, only aware of a stream of alternate pleas and curses slipping past his hold. He thrashes but they hold him down, and he begs Speed Force to intervene, _help me, help me_ , but nothing happens.

Stitch, stitch, stitch.

It only takes ten.

Ten is more than enough.

He can't slow his breathing down for fully three minutes after the last stitch, the pain refusing to abate, and he twists feebly and howls in frustration when they don't let him go. Through the gauze, it's muffled, but he still feels Cisco's hand clamp down hard enough to hurt. He welcomes it, trying to squeeze back, to let him know that it's needed.

When the Speed Force starts talking to him again and sets to work, he feels a nauseating exhaustion settle over him, demanding obedience. _Let-me-work,_ it commands, and he bows to its authority, sinking under at last.

He's gone for a while, because when he wakes up his shoulder aches deeply but does not bring his world to a screeching halt. The legs of his suit are still on, but someone got the upper half off him completely. A warm blanket is drawn halfway up his chest. A sense of anxious peace pervades the room, and he tries to project calm, to feel it.

He opens his eyes, opens his mouth to speak, but the only sound to come out is a thin whine. Cisco squeezes his hand. "You're okay." He reinforces the claim with a harder squeeze.

Barry sits up slowly, grimacing as his shoulder wakes up with a pounding, hangover pulse. "Where's Wally?"

"Pipeline," Cisco says, letting go of his hand so he can rest it against the middle of his back instead. Barry appreciates the support, reaching for his own shoulder with his now free hand and wincing. He won't be throwing lightning with his right arm for a while. Or holding a pen, he thinks, a rueful reminder that Singh's 'reasons to fire Allen' folder is growing daily.

"I need to talk to him," Barry groans, swinging his legs over the bed and standing. He glances down at the IV in his hand and then at Caitlin, her arms folded thoughtfully as she stands in a corner. "Cait?" he prompts, holding his hand up. She arches her eyebrows, looking somewhat distant but no small amount disapproving.

"He tried to kill you," she points out.

"He didn't mean to," Barry insists. "He only did it because … I think he was being controlled by Savitar."

"What makes you say that?" Cisco asks.

Barry holds his hand again. "I'm not afraid to take this out," he warns.

Caitlin takes a step forward and beats him to it, giving him a pointed look. _Don't do anything stupid._

 _I won't._ "He … disappeared," Barry says, grunting in discomfort when he puts weight on his feet and his shoulder aches in protest, loud and clear. "He was transparent."

"I didn't know Speed could do that," Caitlin says.

"That's worrying," Cisco adds.

"I'm more worried about Wally than what he can do with it," Barry says, pulling open a cabinet with his left arm – ow, _fuck_ , he needs something for the right – and grabbing a button-up shirt. Thank God for stashes. He still needs Cisco's help getting it over his right arm and swears continuously until it's in place, exhaling sharply and saying, "He should've been a jouster; he'd pack a mean punch with a javelin."

"Don't give him any ideas," Cisco warns.

Barry nods and fishes around for a sling. Caitlin puts it on. "Thanks," he tells her, the weight on his shoulder two percent less miserable.

"Be careful," Caitlin says.

He nods and Flashes off, his back unbunching as Speed Force takes off some of the discomfort associated with deep, unshakable pain.

It's all too brief. He skids to a halt outside the particle accelerator scarce seconds later. Jesse is already there, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to Wally, also cross-legged, on the opposite side of the cell. Wally's eyes light up when they see Barry, glowing golden, and Barry says, "Wally."

" _Get away from her._ "

There's venom in his voice. Jesse stays seated and pleads, "Wally, it's just Barry."

" _Get away from her,_ " Wally roars, smashing a hand against the glass, and it cracks.

Steam mists into the cell and Wally prowls to the back of the cell, pressing himself against it even as he sinks to the floor, body going limp in seconds.

"I thought these were indestructible," Jesse says, standing, looking sickened and sad.

"They are," Barry replies, staring at the shatter point. "It's Savitar. He's using Wally."

"Why?"

Barry shrugs and regrets it instantly, grimacing. "To get to me?" he tries. "He isn't attacking you. I don't know. We'll figure it out." He puts a reassuring hand on her elbow and squeezes it. "I promise."

Jesse nods, looking at Wally, asleep on the floor, and pursing her lips. "I really don't like knocking friends out," she says in a thin voice, verge-of-tears, and Barry pulls her into a careful, one-armed hug.

It's what he does, and he knows why he does it: Speed pours over the contact, soothing and sure. "Sometimes we have to make hard choices. He'll forgive us."

"How do you know?"

Barry keeps his tone delicate, his posture unaggressive. "Because I did."

Jesse tenses but he doesn't, and he's surprised at how little he cares. It feels like a lifetime ago. Maybe it was. Were these even the people who locked him in the pipeline?

He doesn't – can't – know.

 _Jesse was._

That thought emerges from the dark and he's very aware that despite the changes he's made to Earth-1, Earth-2 seemed unaffected.

 _Seemed._ _Would Harry even know if his world was changed?_

He lets Jesse go. "Thank you for saving my life," he says seriously.

"Of course." She seems almost surprised he would thank her, backing off and looking back at Wally. "Now we just have to save his."

"We will," Barry promises.

One thing he's learned over twenty-eight years: family doesn't leave behind its own, no matter the costs.


End file.
